


Time, As a Symptom

by we_are_all_irrelivant



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Foster Care, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Neglect, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Nurse Sidon, Self-Harm, hey... if i ever get anything wrong please like ? tell me lol ?, ill try and warn ya, im so stupid and im so full of fear, psych ward au, psychiatric hospital, somewhat graphic at times so. be careful
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 01:45:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13377504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/we_are_all_irrelivant/pseuds/we_are_all_irrelivant
Summary: But then, who was there to tell him any better? Who was there that might hold him, caress him, press his fragile, fractured pieces back together?When there is nothing else, no one else, to dig your desperate, trembling hooks into, you search in all the wrong places.





	Time, As a Symptom

**Author's Note:**

> its worth noting theres a decent self harm tw on this first chapter (and first paragraph sorta ;;) so watch out !!!!

Link was not within himself. Not presently. He could see himself, his pale, cold skin, his wild, tangled hair mused and knotted around his head like a halo, but he could feel no part of himself; he was only as a spectator. Link was, instead, across the room, perched on the sink, watching the cramped hustle and bustle of the paramedics about his body. The air was hot with the press of so many bodies in so small a space. He watched the thin, shivering girl in the corner, watched her ushered from the room by a wide, warm woman, voice cooing trembling reassurance as she went.

 

His body was splayed on the bleached white tile, strutless form crumpled, arms spread wide. The gouges in his wrists shone terribly under the flourescent lights of the vanity. There was beneath him a steadily growing pool of blood, soaking into the edge of the bathmat. He’d done that bit with the last of his steadily waning strength, he remembered. The first spurt of blood, hotter and redder and darker than anything he’d ever leaked from his own flesh, had not phased him as he’d worried it would; the pills rotting in his belly had muddled his mind, blurred his vision and numbed his nerves. He had not panicked.

 

He could see the things they were doing to him, the needles, tubes shoved into him, the bandages pressed to his pale skin, the fingers groping for his fluttering pulse, but he couldn’t feel one bit of it; he could hardly even hear the whine of their ambulance in the front yard.

 

In his memory he had been able to do this, this stepping out of himself, slipping away from his physical self, letting it function on autopilot so he might have a few chance moments of solitude, since he was a child. He wasn’t sure when or why or how he had learned it. The first time had certainly been an accident. One moment he had been beside the hot mountain that was his father, too low to the ground to know of the mother wasting to bones in the bed before them, gaze swinging to look at a commotion behind him, and the next he was in that hallway, gazing wide eyed at a volley of nurses dashing to some screaming alarm at the end of the hall. He had shuffled through that bleak, dirtied white brightness, stench of bleach and alcohol cleaners stinging in his nose. He knew not how he had gotten there; his father never would have let him leave, certainly not to wander, yet here he was. He reached a small, frail hand to touch the dappled peeling paint of wall, when suddenly his father was grabbing that very same wrist and dragging him from the room, doctors rushing in at the same moment that his mother’s soul rushed out. He knew not how he had snapped back into himself, back into the room so quickly, but he he didn’t care to ask; his father seemed presently preoccupied with pressing his hard face into his wide hands and shivering. It became his secret then; it seemed it would remain as such the day, some years later, that his father bustled him from the car onto the front lawn of the church the next town over and tore away in a dry cloud of August dust.

 

After those days, it seemed he was slipping out of himself much more often. He did it the first time he met his first set of foster parents, too busy staring at a stream of insects into a muddy anthill to catch their names. Luckily, what level of familiarity he shared with them didn’t matter much longer than that; it was not long until he was being pressed back into the arms of his caseworker, suitcase shoved into the trunk. There was another house, another family after that he knew, but the memories of the rest of his temporary families began to run together after them, blending and blurring into a vague mess of a wide black van, ushered to and from unfamiliar homes full of unfamiliar smells and unfamiliar voices almost too fast for him to catch. Some clear, stark remnants existed in his mind, islands of clarity in the middle of that sea of his childhood. Other wide-eyed children blinking at him with the same look of mute reservation, children he sometimes scorned and who sometimes scorned him back, who he sometimes clung to and sought out—someone to clutch in the depths of their unheated winters, someone to distract the gnawing hunger that sometimes plagued their thin bellies. He could not recall any of their names, or what had happened to them. He tried not to think of it too often.

 

He could recall one time, one car ride with his caseworker, a flighty, worried woman whose name—Navi—it had taken him what seemed like decades to learn. She had been rambling as she always did about this new family, about how kind and sweet these two were known to be, about how sure she was they could be the ones to adopt him, about how good his life would surely now be. Link had long since turned his attention from her, eyes sliding over the blurred mess of the browning plots of land whipping past them. They reached a light, slowed, and Link’s eyes caught up to the landscape. Within an instant, he was gone, standing in the midst of the meadow, long limping leaves of grass tickling his ankles through his shoes, thick redolence of wildflowers choking his nose. The grass swished as he walked, moved as a wave to bend and curl around him, stepped carefully over hidden rocks and obstacles. Even after the light must have turned green, he remained. He could not feel the rumble of the car or the stink of its exhaust or the hum of the engine. Link simply stood, eyes unfocused and staring at the wide blue sky above him, the ginger wilds stretching before him, briars and burrs clinging to the denim of his jeans, pricking at the skin beneath. A bit of movement suddenly caught his eye, made him shift his gaze. It was a fly. No, it was several, fat black blurs flitting and hovering over a thicker cloud of them on the ground. Link didn’t have to love to see what it was; the thick, oily syrup of putrefied flesh was visible from where Link stood, shining and stinking from the dead animal that was tucked into the briars, slick and rotten and hot with the squirm of maggots. Link closed his eyes, flinched away from the gore in shock, and suddenly he was back, the lilting din of Navi’s voice turning in his ear, body rocking with the sway of the car. They were almost to the house, she was saying.

 

Link’s present excursion did not last much longer. The din of voice, machines, the sharp cry of a child, began to wane, the stench of his own blood and vomit fading from his nose. He panicked, knew the moment he blinked he would be swept away, pulled back into his own body and buried, swallowed by the dark numbness of this product of his misery. He cut his eyes to the doorway again. He could just barely make out the thin, white fingers of the girl, clutching the wood of the threshold, a single worried eye peeking out to watch the carnage unfolding in the bathroom. Link’s hollow stomach dropped. He began to move, began to climb down to dash her away, pull her away from all of this before it broke her. As he did, his eyes fell shut. He was gone before he knew what had happened, consciousness pulled back into his body and immediately suffocated by the bitter work of the pills.

* * *

 

When Link awoke, all was still. It was dark, the blurry room about him a mess of smeared shadows. He came back into himself slowly, the whole of him buzzing and burning numbly. His stomach was tight and sour, and when he tried to shift himself it screamed in pain, enough to knit his face into a grimace and raise a wave of bile in his throat. The first breath he sucked in tore through his throat, forced a tight, scared gasp from his chapped lips. He grasped feebly at his chest with weak, trembling fingers, attached to hands wrapped so tightly at the wrists his fingertips seemed cold. The longer he was back, mind too muddy and fogged to slip away willingly or not, the worse the subtle pervasive ache in his very flesh became. He let his eyes fall shut again, some hot, unknown agony rising bitterly in his throat, slipping from his lips as a soft, broken sob. As he did, he finally noticed the familiar hollow scent of cleaning alcohol, bleach, dry nitrile gloves. He peeled open one bloodshot eye, finally caught sight of the needle buried in the crook of his elbow.

 

“You’re awake.”

 

Link’s gaze slid slowly across the room, settled unsteadily on the familiar form of his foster mother, seated heavily in the chair in the corner. Her face was tight and worn, the darkness of the room only blackening the shadowed lines and furrows across her face, the grey beneath her eyes. Her hair was swept up messily upon her head, a deviation from the welcoming, conservative way she usually wore it down. She wore no makeup, and her glasses, reserved for her, quote, “lazy days,” were perched on the end of her nose. She looked nothing like the calm, reserved woman he had known for so many years. She was reminiscent of the version of herself he had seen the day they first met, when she had looked, despite her and her husband’s experience, scared and undeniably unprepared.

 

Link didn’t say a word. He didn’t think he could have if he’d wanted to. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, like a hot lump of metal soldered to ground. His foster mother shifted in her seat, readjust her glasses on her nose. She pressed them further back with the tip of her ring finger, the way she always did. “You were in and out of it for… a while. You only just—” She closed her eyes for a moment. “You were very close to…” Her mouth pressed into a thin line. When she opened her eyes, her gaze was burning out the window, at the distant glimmering lights of the nearby neighborhoods. “I hope you’re happy to know you _almost_ succeeded.”

 

Link’s chest warmed, acrid guilt turning wildly in his stomach. The IV in his arm stung. Wrapped around his forearm was some sort of brace, faded scars visible through the gaps in the strapping. If he tried to bend his arm, the rough edge of the velcro bit into his skin. A dull, thudding headache blossomed in his left temple, worsened when his gaze strayed over the pools of light illuminating his bed. Sleep already tugged gently at the edges of his consciousness. Link sucked in a slow, labored breath, lungs swelling and stretching stiffly as he did, a soft whimper rumbling in his throat.

 

“Ah…” Link’s voice was rough, cracked and gave out on just the syllable. “Ar… Aryll…”

 

“She’s at home. We thought it would be best if she didn’t see you for a little while.” Her gaze changed, hardened almost imperceptibly. Of those who loved Link’s foster sister, his foster mother was undeniably first, even before him. He had sensed it the first night he spent in that house, and it had not waned one bit in the nearly three years since. “I’m sure her finding you was traumatic enough.”

 

Link’s stomach dropped, burned and wound itself round and round itself. The girl in the corner, eyes so wide in terror, skin drained snow white, so paralyzed she had to be led from the room. Yes, now he remembered. He had been alone when he did, hadn’t he? He’d locked the door, too swallowed by paranoia to trust that the house was empty, that anyone home would ignore him as they were wont to do. Right? He’d heard it, the soft click of the lock falling into place. How had she gotten in, then? She wouldn’t have followed him. Would she? She was a smart girl despite her age; knew when to leave him to his own devices, when it was best to step away and leave him to wrestle his demons himself. She had seen, heard the berating from her parents whenever they discovered the filthy red gashes winding across his wrists; she knew she oughtn’t add to his anguish as well. She knew. She knew. She couldn’t have followed; he hadn’t heard her come in. He hadn’t heard anything, he knew; he room had been silent, he’d thought, save for the horrid drip of blood on the tile. He would have known if she’d been there. Oh, but she was such a slight girl, wasn’t she? She could slip to and from a room like a shadow, a skill learned in a home that acted more as a waypoint than a shelter for so many. But then, she’d have knocked. She was polite. She knew. She knew what a locked, silent bathroom door meant for him. But then, how had she gotten to him, seen his carnage, smelled the rot of his misery, stepped in his blood? He’d locked the door. Hadn’t he? His memory failed him now, entire chunks staticed and white, but he knew he had. He thought he had. He had to have. He would not have risked scarring her precious mind like that. Right?

 

Across from him, she shifted, face relaxing slowly as her mind wandered from what he’d done to her family. “Your… We’ve… us and the doctors have decided that it’d be better to have you put in psychiatric inpatient care here. So you can focus on recovering somewhere you’re guaranteed to be safe.” Her voice was hollow now, had turned into that dry, plasticy thing she used with Navi. It was clear to him she was just parroting what she’d been told. “You’ll be moved there as soon as a bed’s open, once you’re stable… medically.”

 

Link let his eyes fall shut. Of course he’d heard of and seen psychiatric hospitals, asylums full of numb, catatonic patients shuffling through filthy halls in straitjackets, and “inpatient” he had caught tossed between older foster siblings, ones who always glared at him and scorned his childish innocence. He had never in his years thought he’d ever end up in one. He never knew what all getting into one, being a danger enough to oneself, wanting badly enough to cease to exist to warrant it might entail; but then, he had also never known until then how easy it was to knock back a fistful of aspirin. He wasn’t sure how to feel. His stomach stirred terribly, rose a wave of something rotten in his throat. He curled his fists in the blanket over his legs, biting back the nausea.

 

The remainder of his days passed as a blur, mind still too shocked and numb to register much of it. For some time afterwards, every hour a nurse visited him to bend over his IV port and disconnect it, slotting over it instead several empty test tubes, one after the other, in which they collected a bit of his blood. After they were finished, a bit of saline was always pushed into his arm, the clean bitter taste of which always blossomed in the corners of his mouth a second later. Some of them brought fat, swollen bags of clear liquids; some he knew were more saline—a replacement for the cups of water he always croaked at the nurses for, yet they refused to give him in lieu of tiny portions of hard, sharp pieces of ice he was still too weak to chew—but some contained other substances, whatever drugs they were using to put his broken body back together. He thought it had to stop eventually; he hadn’t gotten a good wink of sleep since passing out in that bathroom, perpetually woken by nurses not as deft at the exchange of tubes as their peers, kept alert at times by the whirring of his own mind, trying in vain to conjure up just what this ward would look like.

 

Eventually, it did end, as he’d hoped. He could not recall when or how or why but somewhere in his memory, the hourly visits ended. The rest was even more of a misplaced sludge, all full of pain wracking his body, curling around bedpans as he vomited up the last dregs of his overdose, crying out when he jerked his IV arm hard enough to jostle the needle buried in it, cold hands touching him, searching, feeling for things he was too spent to understand; clutching his IV pole with weak as he shuffled to the bathroom in scratchy, pale yellow nonslip socks, too utterly ashamed at the state of himself to ask his foster mother for aid (as if she would ever willingly do anything but lie in that awful chair and stare at him until he sweated); gazing at his body in the mirror when he stood, eyes caught on the gaunt, skeletal form of it when his gown swept away from him, the thick, wormy scars clinging to his thighs, his hips, his stomach, the steadily darkening din-gray circles worn beneath his eyes, the messy, frenzied way what little short golden hair he still had (shorn nearly to the scalp just a week ago in an act of violent and foolish self confidence) seemed to stick in every possible direction. It seemed endless. Time ceased to exist to him.

 

A week after being admitted, he was allowed to be moved. A bed became free that same afternoon.

 

Link clutched his small bundle of belongings to his body, hands curled into tight, white knuckled fists. The clothes he had worn to the hospital had been ruined, cut to shreds by the doctors scrambling to save his life in the ER. His foster mother had at some point brought him a few of his toiletries from home, promising later to come back with his clothes. For now, he was dressed in a pair of plain powder blue scrubs. They fit him poorly, too large in the chest and too thoroughly starched, turning him into a stiff yet shapeless blob. He didn’t mind. His mind was elsewhere. His body ached and complained as he followed the nurse down to the bay of the children’s hospital, where a security vehicle would cart him away to the psychiatric facility next door (his foster mother _could_ have done it but she had been away from home too long; Aryll would miss her, she claimed).

 

The nurse’s perfume filled the elevator. Link’s stomach turned tightly. His arm stung where his IV had been, the cotton ball placed there sticking to the residue from the tape. He followed her numbly when the doors opened, padded slowly over the bright, childish tile floors. They reached the sliding doors of the outpatient bay, and suddenly Link was across the parking lot, watching himself climb into the security car. The air was cold, tight and sharp and stinking of exhaust and road salt. Even when he was inside, when the door had closed and the car had rumbled to life and he was taken away, just a few minutes from the main hospital, he knew, but for god knows how many days, the chill remained. It crept up his body, wound around its neck to grip at the base of his skull like a vice; it seemed to crawl into him, leached into his bones, his flesh, his blood and spear him through like a fish on a hook.

 

His breath stuck in his throat. He closed his eyes. He did not open them. He couldn’t bring himself to do so.


End file.
